My Commitment to My Audience in the Crowded World of Dueling Narratives

Don't let the rapid expansion of this platform and bountiful availability of junk content distract you from the fact that there are those of us who remain committed to top-notch writing and content.

Substack is starting to really launch. This is owed to many things:

· Non-censorship

· Information aggregation and sharing

· Less drama and toxicity

The platform recently announced that it has more than 5 million active paid subscriptions, making their leap from 4 million to 5 the shortest million-interval yet. With this growth will come diminished user satisfaction because you’ll have all sorts of people on the platform vying for your attention. I support open markets and competition, but let me give you an example of this mental junk food from “Notes,” which can be found on the Substack app:

More algorithm junk as the platform expands - who made the script?

These appeared on my app feed last night one after the other. I’m not here to make anyone look silly, so I’ve redacted identifying details for the Note authors, but it’s obvious to me that there’s an algorithm detection game being played. Notes are different than journal postings (like the ones I make nearly every day) or chat entries (to subscribers) in that they are outward-facing and meant to serve as billboards (subscribe here) pointing to someone’s Substack journal. As such, news blurbs and findings don’t get as much attention as heartfelt stories or rah-rah admonitions like not caring if someone has zero subscribers or 10,000, like the posts above suggest. The goal is free subscribers that eventually stick to a standard free-to-paid conversion rate.

Two days ago (before spotting those two posts I grabbed from yesterday), I had seen another post that prompted this Note from yours truly:

Captain K’s note about Substack virtue signaling

The author of the Note that prompted my response was lamenting the use of inboxes (presumably her own) as personal diaries of Substack authors. I think we all have spam that floats into our inboxes we can’t seem to shake free of, but if you’re getting Substack articles in your inbox, it’s because you signed up for it. The advice from the Note author was to work on writing for enjoyment and personal leisure rather than to get people to read your stuff.

That, my friends, is where the communicator and businessperson within blew a gasket. Look, if you want to write for pleasure, you can always go down to Barnes and Noble and pick up a nice, leather-backed journal and fill it with all sorts of calligraphy, musings, and stickers. You’re not fooling me – if you’re writing on Substack, free or paid, you’re writing here for your writing to be read by the world. This is true for bestsellers and for hobbyists alike.

Since I started my journal three years ago this month, it has become one of the most widely read and disseminated in the political space. I am proud to say that it lands in the inboxes of some of the most influential voices in government and politics today, and with enough people in that grouping that it has most certainly come across the most respected desk in the world; therefore, my commitment to quality and actionable information keeps me grounded in truth and mission.

As far as I recall, I’ve never retracted an article for incorrect information. I have the luxury of having smart friends, including a recently made friend with a brilliant legal brain who poked holes in some historical inaccuracies surrounding Alexander Hamilton’s service as Treasury Secretary (which I amended), but there are multiple reasons you don’t see me pulling down work:

· I’m not afraid to be wrong

· I don’t rush to the first conclusion to get clicks

· I don’t appreciate shock jocks who write just to make people angry and then run from the fallout

There are nearly 28,000 of you who read this journal as free subscribers. There are media moles, tire kickers, and dormant accounts in that number, but by and large, most of the names in that listing were brought in by something that was written that drew their attention in a big way. This guides my decision to limit paid-only articles, and as such, some of my most important articles were open for all from the moment they were published. With that said, I owe it to those who pay to read my work to write, and write often, and to ensure that they are getting the very best that my brain and virtual pen have to offer. This is why they stick with me at rates far higher than the standard one-year retention rates found on Substack; they know I’ll show up and produce relevant and actionable information for them and their money won’t be wasted in supporting leaky faucets who post click bait.

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If you subscribe to Captain K’s Corner, here’s what you can expect to get:

· Detailed analysis with takeaways of important world events impacting our freedoms, written from the perspective of an Army intelligence veteran

· Top-notch election analysis from all angles, including perhaps the only broad perspective factoring in traditional political analysis with my own studied opinions of capacity for election manipulation

· Calls to action for those wishing to be engaged but still looking for the right path to do so

· More laughs than you can get from a $200 ticket to an overrated casino comedy show

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When I was a 26-year-old First Lieutenant serving in Afghanistan, my primary duty was to compile, edit, and distribute my unit’s Intelligence Summary (known as an INTSUM in military terminology), which became the most widely distributed INTSUM in Western Afghanistan (RC-West) in the 2010-11 timeframe. I personally sent it out at the stroke of midnight to assess every item that had happened in the previous 24 hours. There was none of this “flooding my inbox” nonsense floating around. People wanted to read our INTSUM because we drew their attention to the things that mattered the most – like how to defeat the enemy and not be defeated by him while carrying out missions.

1LT Keshel, 2011, returning home

I was trained well for this period in history and the information war that rages daily, and my commitment remains the same as it did on August 21, 2021, when President Trump called my name on a hot summer night in Cullman, Alabama. Your support for my work here is greatly appreciated and has allowed me to continue this battle far longer than I ever imagined. For all my subscribers here, paid or not, I cannot thank you enough for finding value in the words I write, and my hope is that in navigating this rapidly expanding platform, you find me a consistent voice in the fight for truth.

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Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.